The old tabletop gag about three kobolds stacked in a trench coat pretending to be one heroic adventurer is now a real card game, and it did something unusual to get there: it skipped Kickstarter entirely. Three Kobolds in a Trench Coat launched straight to shops at UK Games Expo 2026 from independent UK publisher FanCrafted.
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Start organising for freeIt is a bluffing party game for 2 to 4 players aged 12 and up, running about 15 to 45 minutes. You each control three kobolds disguised as an upstanding citizen of the village of Crumblebatch, and the goal is to keep them hidden: complete quests, collect gold, bribe the guards to point suspicion elsewhere, and catch your rivals in a lie to expose their kobolds one by one. Run short or fail a challenge and you lose a kobold. The last player with a hidden monster wins. It sells for £35 direct from FanCrafted.
The route to release is the interesting part. FanCrafted told Geek Native it dodged crowdfunding because it was wary of the model, citing the familiar frustration of backing games that never arrive, and chose to fund its own print run to keep control of manufacturing and fulfilment. So there is no pledge manager and no multi-year wait, just a finished game on the shelf. The art is hand-drawn by William M. Muljo, and the studio says no generative AI was used.
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See how it worksA snappy, easy-to-teach bluffer is always worth a slot in the bag. Find a group to play it with, or start a game night and put it on the table.
Sources: FanCrafted | Geek Native
